One Grim Room: Ludum Dare #37

One Grim Room: Ludum Dare #37

One Grim Room: Ludum Dare #37

20.02.2017admin

During the first weekend of December 2016 our courageous team consisting of a game designer, a writer, a translator and a composer (he was a last minute addition) decided to create a torture chamber sim for a game jam. The theme was “One Room”.

In the absence of a coder and an artist who couldn’t participate in the fun that weekend our options were limited. But that didn’t stop us. What we got in the end was a concise and solemnly grim torture simulator with a random victim generator and almost no interface.

Ludum Dare’s participants braved their tough objective and minimal interface but ultimately all the reviews of the game being “too difficult” we increased the amount of time the players got to work on each victim. Now the game has two difficulty levels — tough and tougher.

Here are some of the first players’ reviews:

This game has very good (I mean grim) atmosphere, great diaries, great music – it was really great experience. It would be great to see more tortures, though. Great job!

Oh, man if only I wasn’t scared of tortures :c

Dia6lo

Grim stuff! Even though this is text-based, it’s quite a gruesome trip (perhaps maybe its BECAUSE it leaves everything up to my imagination). Of course I think that’s what you’re going for!

I think your idea of introducing a tutorial level will help a lot.

SimonHutchinson

Wow. This was definitely a very innovative game. I got to about Day 10 before I finally ended my life. This game is WONDERFULLY depressing and really evokes a fantastic mood. Bravo.

Linear

The gameplay is a tough balancing act, but I think that just adds to the tension, which is impressive. The writing is really excellent. I only managed to get a full confession out of one person, and my incompetent assistant killed most of my victims!

Obvious_San

As much as we wanted to engrossing with interesting text and elegant mechanics alone, players like women often love with their eyes, so to speak. So our nearest plan is to enhance the game’s interface to wrap our text and mechanics with bright colors and balanced forms.